reports from the home front

Unfurling: An Invitation

For me, I live closer to my truth when I create opportunities to speak from my heart. Or, as I wrote the other evening, I learn myself better when I articulate what’s true.

Living in my third home state in a five year span, it is more often than not that I wish for the input of a friend that does not live nearby. Someone who is engaged with similar work and questions and discoveries as myself. There have been many shared epiphanies and moments of mutual inspiration over the course of these friendships. I can’t help but wonder what has yet to manifest from these dialogues. It seems Human to converse and I want to follow these lines of inquiry further.

A lot of my good time is spent in wandering the well-worn pathways of my mind. When the stars align, I hike or run at least once a week and my mind picks up the reins of my brain and off we go, ruminating together. It is in these moments of mixed adrenaline and idea chasing that I notice myself crafting messages that rarely make it onto paper or screen. I get excited and want to connect, but it is hard to find adequate time to tend to each relationship I hold dear. And, naturally, it gets harder with the distance of time and space.

My hands tend to be in motion during the day. I am grateful for the cultivation of disciplines that support my family life as I have begun to lay out in earlier essays on this blog. Now, I am working on those that will nourish myself.

The physical disciplines of yoga and forward motion are what I instinctively turn towards these extremely physical baby holding days. It a release valve for the accumulated stress and lets me find more internal space, which has tremendous trickle up effects.

The next piece in this drive towards a discipline of self-care is writing consistently: articulation of belief, the craft of revision and the possibility of dialogue with my greater tribe is the practice that I am taking up here and I am grateful to myself for this devotion of time and space (and both hands!).

My moment of solidifying a commitment to this format came along on a typical weekday morning. I am often able to get a lot “done” in the pause between breakfast and morning naps and snacktime. The boys will play near one another and I scurry about starting laundry, wiping counters, making lists and checking them twice. During one such pause, I found myself vigorously cleaning my bathroom whilst gulping coffee. I had planted the seed of this blog in my mind quite recently and it was germinating away as I cleaned. As I turned my torso upside down in an effort to better attend to some scrubbing, I felt the obvious acidic backlash come up my throat as the words “Zen” and “housekeeping” reverberated in my mind. With my bell of clarity and hilarity thus rung, I sat back on my heels to laugh at the incongruity, realign my digestive body and commit to this release valve, too.

I feel curious: What are you doing for self-care? What do you wish that you were cultivating for self-care? How do you find your own version of Zen while tending home, little ones, careers and all the rest of it?

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3 thoughts on “Unfurling: An Invitation”

Well. leaving a reply at 3 AM is a bit oxymoronic in the context of self care. However, I’m compelled to reply. First – I love your writing! I WISH I had more time for writing. In the name of self care, I tell myself I can’t take on one more thing. But then these love-hate windows open up, and in – or out – I jump. What else am I to do in these wee hours? Hate that I’m not getting the sleep I need, but love the sudden time and clarity to contemplate.

Self care for me is less intentional, and much less disciplined than your admirable approach. When I consider why I generally feel balanced, it has more to do with following creative whims, and always trying to get better at something. Music for example: my whim is to play my guitar when I really should be planning tomorrow’s lessons. But once I’ve followed my whim, for better or worse, I am focused on, and deliberate with self-improvement. The same goes for sports, origami, cooking…and even wasting my time with Words With Friends. For me, self care involves allowing myself to indulge – to go overboard when I’m feeling it (like last minute projects with my students, or whimsical distractions at home), and yet embracing the challenge to be getting better all the time, at everything – the big things and the little things. I also allow myself to have down time with no guilt (commonly perceived as wasting time). I think that’s what “living in the moment” gets at. And that, my friend, is my version of self care. I think.

Lise! Thanks for your comments, it was a joy to journey out the window with you. I love that you include doing nothing or wasting time as a piece of self care. That does seem left behind in our day and age, I have always enjoyed watching the sky stream by overhead and I think that is one of the benefits of spending time with children. There lack of agenda of getting stuff “done” allows for many more opportunities to pause, lolly gag and wonder. I miss you friend and wish that I could hear your guitar playing from here!